Post-Bush GOP wants someone to love

Imagine an episode of "The Dating Game" in which the bachelorette interviews 10 prospective dates, then tells them to chill while she checks out a guy she noticed in the parking lot.

The 10 declared Republican presidential candidates will line up at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday night for their first debate, each seeking to become the GOP’s next Mr. Right. But the types that Republican primary voters habitually look for are absent. No BMOC. No conservative darling.

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Even more disconcerting, the last guy they thought was Mr. Right has, over the course of a six-year relationship, turned out to be the wrong man for them. Republican voters still care about President Bush but have fallen far out of love. They’re now searching for a candidate who embodies the principles for which they elected Bush, but not the policies of his presidency.

"No Republican presidential nominee is going to manage to win a third Bush term," said one party operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he's involved in the race. Everyone from the candidates on down is trying to figure out “what kind of Republican is the right one for the party in a post-Bush world,” said GOP strategist Greg Strimple, who is unaffiliated with any candidate.

The May 3 debate — hosted by The Politico, MSNBC and the Reagan library — will offer a very public and occasionally awkward glimpse of a party engaged in a hunt for a new and different relationship. While the candidates rhetorically dodge being closely linked to the incumbent, for example, they’ll be quick to embrace the president for whom the venue is named, particularly with hostess Nancy Reagan seated in the audience.

Politico.com is co-host of the Republican presidential debate on May 3rd, and candidates will be answering our readers’ favorite questions. Click here to submit yours.

Also on hand will be Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), the cycle’s ineligible bachelor. Schwarzenegger’s Austrian birth certificate keeps him from hitting the presidential trail but isn’t stopping him from giving speeches about a “post-partisan” world (in which, presumably, a Republican governor of blue California could get nominated for the presidency), asserting that California will lead where Washington doesn’t, and otherwise using his platform to promote the role of moderates and the center-right in the GOP.

The would-be rival who just might become the conservative darling, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, will parachute into the area for a local GOP function the next day. Although he isn’t participating in the debate and doesn’t plan to announce his intentions by that point, The Politico reported recently that the timing of his visit puts him squarely in the mix. Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo says the timing is coincidental.

Recent national polls place Thompson and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is playing coy until September, in the top tier for the party’s nomination, ahead of candidates who have been running for months. Gingrich is distinguishing himself by firing off tougher criticism of Bush administration management than the current contenders dare to offer, including calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign for his role in the firings of several U.S. attorneys. Another Republican who’s playing hard to get is Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who breaks with the GOP in one very big way with his outspoken critique of the Iraq war.

Persistent interest in these non-contenders seems like a classic case of wanting the guy or girl you can’t have while overlooking what’s right in front of you. The 10 gathered onstage for the debate collectively offer Republican voters anything they could ask for in terms of attributes or issue positions. But none of them fits the party’s conventionally accepted mold of Mr. Right: a consistently right-to-life, pro-gun, fiscal conservative with the biography and national standing to unite and inspire its various factions.

Primary voters’ dalliance with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shows an unexpected willingness to flirt with the bad boy. But because social conservatives hold such influence over the nominating process, the most popular candidate in the field hasn’t assumed an aura of inevitability.

Democrats also face a diverse range of prospects but seem comparably secure that somewhere among them is the right relationship. Former Vice President Al Gore is getting second looks because of his newfound international celebrity, but Democrats aren’t pining to get back together with him — not when they stand to nominate the first-ever woman or African-American nominee. Concerns that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton may be too polarizing or that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama may not be “black enough” seem like nitpicky grievances compared to the restlessness on the other side.

For a change, it’s Republicans who are enduring a very public airing of concerns about the perceived deficiencies of their field. The front-runners aren’t conservative enough. The conservatives aren’t viable enough — not yet, at least.

But the biggest problem for their candidates is Bush’s collapse as a role model, what with public unhappiness with the war in Iraq, conservative disgruntlement with his centrist stance on immigration and the growth of government spending on his watch. Unfortunately for Arizona Sen. John McCain, in backing Bush on the war and immigration, he’s hugging Bush in all the wrong ways.

Republican voters continue to rally around their president, but it is more as a show of support for their own when he is under attack by the opposition, just as Democratic voters rallied around Bill Clinton toward the end of his presidency. That Bush’s job approval rating still hovers between 30 percent and 40 percent in most polls reflects this continuing the president a few weeks ago. It’s more along the lines of, “He’s part of the family, so this is something I have to do.”

“GOP primary voters want the president to be recognized for being ‘a good man’ they largely agree with, but there is a significant tolerance for adopting alternative policy positions,” said the party operative who requested anonymity because he’s involved in the race.